We also have a powerful presentation on mental health apps from Ieso Digital Health which doubtless will make the same point as has been made in previous events that online mental health services typically are more effective than face:face. The abstract to the recent Lancet paper by Dr Lisa Marzano et al, examining this topic in great detail, suggests that the academics are now a long way to working out why this is the case and offers further potential improvements; aspiring mental health app developers unable to access the full paper may consider it worth paying $31.50 (or join the RSM to access it for free).

Moving to good apps the excellent new myhealthapps directory is available for download today (30th September) offering a new classification to improve patient trust in the complex health app market. Of particular interest to this editor, because of his involvement with NIB Workstream 1.2 on medical apps, is the high rate of churn of apps joining, leaving and changing in the directory. Alex Wyke, who runs myhealthapps’ parent, Patient-View, will also be presenting at the RSM Appday – it’s going to be quite a day and combined with senior presentations from NICE/Workstream 1.2, the MHRA, an EU Parliament legal advisor and many more, will quickly sellout the 52 seats still available.

With his DHACA hat on, this editor has also been working closely with Digital Europe recently developing the EU voluntary mHealth Code of Conduct for data privacy, so it’s good to see their Position Paper on mHealth, just published, which makes many sensible, measured, suggestions for not over-regulating the sector. To understand the issues that the Code is seeking to overcome and rebuild user trust in medical apps, this DigitalHealth article does an acceptable job (as well as gratuitously mentioning this editor for a completely different issue at the end). The key paper, looking at the information governance weaknesses of a selection of apps on the NHS Choices Health Apps Library is here – in fairness to the Library though, they were established to provide a list of apps considered by the NHS to be safe (as defined by passing ISB 0129); at the time data privacy was not a topic they were asked to, or staffed to, investigate.

Why this is a particular problem for health & care is analysed well by FierceHealthIT, explaining that it is due to the sector’s combination of lax security and being a rich source of personal data to enable impersonation.

Our definitions

Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.

• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

Telecare Aware's editors concentrate on what we perceive to be significant events and technological and other developments in telecare and telehealth. We make no apology for being independent and opinionated or for trying to be interesting rather than comprehensive.